Tag: opens

House GOP opens politicized-government probe with a Fox News-ready lineup

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“I’m deeply concerned about the use of this select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), her party’s top member on the panel.
Republicans defended their strategy, arguing that whistleblowers — some of whom will testify publicly — have been privately raising concerns to the committee staff. Others have met behind closed doors with the panel, including as recently as this week.
“I have never seen anything like this. Dozens of, dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents, coming to us … Not Jim Jordan saying this, not Republicans, not conservatives, good, brave FBI agents,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the panel and the broader Judiciary Committee.
Yet two of the GOP witnesses who set the tone for the panel’s work are currently employed Fox News contributors with gripes against their onetime organizations to match: former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently left the Democratic Party, and former FBI agent Nicole Parker.
It’s not just the Fox News contributors who set the panel up to deliver a grievance-fueled message to the party base. The GOP witnesses included two GOP senators — Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — as well as constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, a favored witness for Republicans in recent years. Another former FBI official, Thomas Baker, testified.
It’s the panel’s first hearing after Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to create it last month as he sought to lock down conservative votes and win the gavel. And the broad scope of the hearing — the “weaponization of the federal government,” a mission similar to the panel’s own name — is likely to serve as a springboard into a litany of topics that all fuel outrage on the right, although many of the GOP witnesses are particularly critical of the FBI’s actions dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign.
And the vast scope of the hearing in some ways mirrors the panel’s blurry boundary lines in its relationships with other House investigative work. Many of the 12 Republicans on the subcommittee — including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) — have suggested they want to dig into matters that are also being pursued by the wider Judiciary Committee, the Oversight Committee and other panels.
Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary panel and the new subcommittee, wields subpoena power for both panels, making him primarily responsible for sorting out any overlap in jurisdiction. Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has stressed his coordination with Jordan, who preceded him as the top Republican there.

Democrats, mindful of the TV-caliber lineup, selected their own camera-friendly witnesses. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — a constitutional lawyer and veteran of recent major Democratic investigations — sat alongside Grassley, Johnson and Gabbard, ready to parry allegations that his party regards as conspiracy theories. And Elliot Williams, a former Obama Justice Department official who now contributes to CNN, took alongside the other witnesses during a second panel.
Raskin warned that the subcommittee “could take oversight over a very dark alley” and that the panel’s name was “pure physiological projection.”
“Not because ‘weaponization of the government’ is its target, but because weaponization of the government is its purpose. What is in a name? Well, everything is here,” Raskin added.
And the White House fired off an opening salvo against the panel ahead of the hearing, calling it a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” that “weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”
In a standard practice for fellow members, Raskin, Johnson, Grassley and Gabbard only give opening statements, sparing them from questions that would force them to go toe-to-toe with their political opponents.
The decision to rely heavily on GOP, or GOP-aligned witnesses, is a sharp-turn from the last prominent select committee — the Jan. 6 panel. That Democratic-run investigation largely relied on Republicans and officials within Trump’s orbit to tell the story of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol.
Grassley and Johnson discussed, among other matters, their Hunter Biden investigation and their belief that the then-Trump-era FBI worked to undercut their probe of the now-president’s son as the 2020 election drew closer.
“I’ve ran countless investigations. In the past few years, I’ve never seen so much effort from the FBI, the partisan media, and some of my Democratic colleagues to interfere with and undermine very legitimate congressional inquiries,” Grassley said.
The hearing came in the wake of a back-and-forth between Jordan and the Justice Department over his subpoena last week for documents related to certain Biden administration decisions regarding threats against school officials during the pandemic.
The Justice Department, in a letter obtained by POLITICO, told the Ohio Republican that it remained “ready to discuss next steps” on his request for documents and urged him to “reconsider engaging.”
“We are committed to working in good faith to respond to your requests and remain ready to discuss your informational needs and priorities for review and production of pertinent documents,” the department added.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 9, 2023
Klobuchar rising: Leadership path opens for Minnesota Dem

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After rising quietly but steadily since dropping out of the White House hunt nearly three years ago to endorse President Joe Biden, Klobuchar now chairs the Senate Rules Committee and, as chief of the Democratic Steering Committee, sits fourth in the leadership hierarchy. The 62-year-old could keep testing how big her internal clout can get within the Democratic caucus.
Or she could once again test the national stage as a relatively centrist problem-solver in a progressive-heavy field in four years, and vie to succeed Biden as the party’s national standard-bearer. The caucus is already abuzz about who will replace retiring No. 3 Democratic leader Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Klobuchar’s possible ascension to that spot, according to a person briefed on internal conversations.
Ultimately, the succession plan is mostly up to Schumer. And he praised Klobuchar in a statement for this story without tipping his hand: “Amy has an amazing sense of the confluence of policy, press, and politics.”
Approached in the Capitol, Klobuchar declined an interview request for this story. Her spokesperson Jane Meyer said in a statement: “There is always a lot of gossip in the hallways of Congress. I can tell you 100 percent that the senator is focused on one and only one thing: her work.”
Stabenow’s impending departure will offer ambitious, younger Senate Democrats a new opportunity to gain power in the party. Yet if Klobuchar has any designs on running for president again, perhaps in 2028 when the Democratic nomination is expected to be open, she may demur from rising further within Hill leadership.
One Senate Democrat said Klobuchar has “all the credentials and leadership skills” to continue climbing if she wants to.
“My view of it would be, which path are you going to choose? My sense is that the legislative leadership path is not consistent with presidential ambition,” the senator said, addressing the matter on condition of anonymity. “I think she does [look at the White House]. That’s just my gut.”
Klobuchar also has developed a policy profile that stands out in the Democratic Party. She’s championed a stringent tech antitrust bill, though Schumer declined to bring it up under a unified Democratic government the last two years and it faces an uncertain fate under the current divided government.

Her Rules committee also moved a bipartisan proposal to modernize the 19th-century Electoral Count Act last Congress, a bill that ultimately became the only post-Jan. 6 reform to become law. That legislative success relied on her strong relationship with then-Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), at the time her GOP counterpart. And Klobuchar maintains tight relationships with Republicans; on Monday she introduced a campaign finance enforcement bill with Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.).
“Sen. Klobuchar is very respected within the caucus for her strategic sense, and for her grasp of how to communicate with Americans … people value that skill set. Her fundraising capacity is maybe underrated a little bit, but it’s definitely there,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.). “She brings a lot to the caucus in that way.”
Klobuchar’s next sequential move in leadership would be ascending to the post currently held by Stabenow, who runs the Democratic Policy and Communications Center. That post, leading the caucus’ central clearinghouse for messaging, served as the springboard for Schumer to become Democratic leader. Stabenow declined to comment on who succeeds her, and said she’s “got two more years of robustly and effectively leading” the center.
Above Stabenow is Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who has been whip since 2005, next faces reelection in 2026 and has faced no challenges in recent years. Durbin declined to address the leadership team’s future in a brief interview, saying only: “Nice try.”
Leadership’s other positions are more fluid in the hierarchy: Stabenow was the No. 4 leader until Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) left Schumer’s team to join the presidential line of succession as president pro tempore, and became No. 3 leader while maintaining the same DPCC chairmanship.
Seniority matters more in Congress for Democrats than it does in the GOP, where term limits create more turnover in leadership and in committee chairmanships. And it’s unclear if any of the current Democrats on Schumer’s expanded leadership team would be an heir apparent to the current majority leader, who at 72 could easily try to stay on for years to come.
That means Klobuchar isn’t the only senator charting a new course since the 2020 primaries nominated Biden and scattered the rest of the party’s rising stars. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) are both running for congressional reelection, with Warren serving as a leading pragmatic progressive and Gillibrand bearing down on her signature issue of military justice.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) now chairs the influential Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and is also weighing whether to run again. And Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), another of Biden’s 2020 primary foes, is the vice chair of Stabenow’s messaging panel.
In an interview, Booker said he feels “blessed” to be on the leadership team but isn’t thinking about whether he or — someone else like Klobuchar — might succeed Stabenow.
“It’s two years until we face that question,” he said.
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#Klobuchar #rising #Leadership #path #opens #Minnesota #Dem
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 7, 2023
‘Kejriwal’s guarantee’ fulfilled, says Mann as Punjab govt opens 400 new mohalla clinics

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Amritsar: AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday launched 400 more ‘Aam Aadmi’ clinics in the state, calling the event here the fulfilment of another ‘Kejriwal ki guarantee’.
The 400 new ‘Aam Aadmi’ clinics take the total number of these neighbourhood health centres in the state to 500.
Kejriwal, the AAP convenor and Delhi chief minister, said he was happy to note that the Punjab government opened 500 mohalla clinics in just 10 months.
“I am happy to say that Bhagwant Mann has fulfilled one more ‘Kejriwal ki guarantee (Kejriwal’s guarantee)’,” the AAP chief said while referring to the party’s promises made to the people of Punjab in the run up to the 2022 assembly elections.
Five hundred mohalla clinics have been set up in Punjab and, in the time to come, more such facilities will come up, Kejriwal said.
Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh and AAP MP Raghav Chadha were also present at the event.
Kejriwal said all the party’s “guarantees” would be fulfilled and asked the people of Punjab to “have patience” as he targeted the previous dispensations for “destroying” the system.
The AAP has already fulfilled its poll promise of 300 units of free electricity per month, the Delhi chief minister said.

The Mann government is taking action against corruption and will not spare anyone found to be involved in corrupt practices, he added.
Heaping praise on the Mann regime, Kejriwal said 26,000 government jobs had been provided in just the past 10 months and called it a “big thing”.
Jobs here are being provided on the basis of merit, he asserted.
Contractual employees are also being regularised, Kejriwal said.
On the education front, the Mann dispensation is sending 36 government school principals to Singapore for training, the Delhi chief minister added.
Punjab will also begin doorstep delivery of government services along the lines of Delhi, Kejriwal said, adding that this move would create around 6,000 jobs.
On law and order, Kejriwal said police had been given a free hand. Strict action is being taken against gangsters, he added while hitting out at the previous regimes for allegedly giving political patronage to criminals.
Kejriwal said Tata Steel would set up a plant in Ludhiana and more companies had shown interest in setting up their units in Punjab, for which he credited the efforts of Mann.
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#Kejriwals #guarantee #fulfilled #Mann #Punjab #govt #opens #mohalla #clinics
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 27, 2023